“Public Schooling” Is a Myth

The answer is the same for the question: “Do ‘public schools’ serve all students?” Image credit: Snopes.

(Guest Post by Robert Enlow)

Some urban legends just won’t die no matter how many times they are disproven. My favorite is the one that sucked me in during college—the one where Phil Collins wrote the song “In the Air Tonight” after watching a friend refuse to help someone drowning. I admit that one had me going for a while.

In K-12 education, there is an even greater urban legend: that public schools accept all students. This legend is a huge porker that has been repeated so many times that almost everyone believes it is true.

But it isn’t, and it never has been.

First, people in power have always gamed the system. The powerful do it in our nation’s capital, according to a report released recently by the U.S. Inspector General. The report found that the former D.C. Public School Superintendent, Kaya Henderson, regularly helped her wealthy constituents and friends game the public school lottery.

I can hear the wailing chorus now: There may be problems with some schools showing favoritism, but every public school really does accept every kid who comes to their doors. That’s the public school way.

But is it? What about the massive increase in selective admission public schools or magnet schools? In Chicago, selective schools enroll kids based on test scores, and they are now a huge chunk of the high school marketplace. Across the country, according to data at the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of selective enrollment magnet schools grew from 2,722 in 2010-11 to 3,254 in 2013-14. That is an increase of more than 500 schools in just three years.

And what about some of our most vulnerable special needs students? Surely, every single public school accepts every single student with disabilities. Think again. Public schools often contract with private schools or private companies to serve children who they can’t serve. According to the most recent data available from the National Center for Education Statistics almost 260,000 children in America, or 4 percent of all special needs students, fall into this category.

Moreover, any quick review of the headlines will show numerous stories showing that not every public school is adequately serving every child with special needs even though they have a legal obligation to do so. The simple fact is that not every public school is equipped—or required—to serve every type of disability. Public school districts can build public schools that specialize in children with specific disabilities such as autism. Or they can create alternative schools.

So, let’s not forget what most of us know but won’t admit: that it’s okay to choose private schools as long as the public schools do the choosing.

The legend says that public schools accept all comers. That is simply not true, and it never has been.

In fact, the entire system is set up to ensure that public schools don’t really accept all comers. That’s because attendance in public schools is based on geography—on where people live. What this means in practice is that public schools accept all kids who look like each other or who live in similar types of houses and whose family income is the same. K-12 public schools are more segregated by race and income than ever before.

Not every student can actually attend every public school, and not every public school accepts and serves every child.

It’s time for a serious debate on how we can best serve all kids, regardless of where they live or where they go to school. And it’s past time for the urban legend that public schools serve all to die.

Thanks for the statistics on sp-ed. The Hawaii DOE operates a school for the deaf and blind. Campbell HS takes all Leeward (sub) District SMH (severely multiply handicapped) kids.
Thanks also for the overview of assignment by district, which enforces segregation by income (and therefore by race). I make these counter-arguments to the “take everyone” cliché often. Now I can just link this.
Compulsory attendance statutes in a voucher-subsidized institutional environment don’t mean much unless, for every child whom all other schools reject, there is some school which must accept that child. Call these default-option schools “the public schools” and put their operation out to bid. Now the system “accepts everyone” and most parents have a choice of education options.

You are grouping private and charter schools with Public Schools. There is no comparison for student acceptance between private/charter and Public Schools. These are distinct and separate entities. Private schools you admit have testing and standards to be accepted. Charter schools are much the same way, though closer to Public Schools.

Public Schools are mandated by state and Federal law to accept all students. If the school’s are gaming the system in Chicago and New York, what’s new about that? These cities have been gaming everything for 100 years.

You can’t out off the crimes of a few on the only true means of education for the vast majority of our children in the U.S.

(Chuck): “Public Schools are mandated by state and Federal law to accept all students.”

The NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel’s schools (the “public schools”) are segregated by income (assignment by district), test performance (magnet schools), age (obviously), and physical condition (the Hawaii Leeward (sub)District sent SMH (severely multiply handicapped) students to Campbell. No school “accepts all students”.